


Blood Sunset

by Wolver_bean



Category: Cars (Pixar Movies)
Genre: Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, biological function, bros respecting bros, feral mcqueen, i wrote this in comic sans, littol fic just a tiny babey, post cars 3, slight existential crisis, strip is a good uncle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26382787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolver_bean/pseuds/Wolver_bean
Summary: An unwillingly retired Lightning McQueen tries to follow in The King's treadmarks.
Relationships: Lightning McQueen & Strip Weathers
Kudos: 24





	Blood Sunset

**Author's Note:**

> Hello I wrote this over a year ago and it has since evolved into something far, far larger than this. (There was more to this particular fic that I never finished writing but I'll explore those themes elsewhere.) I wanted to try out 2nd person also after a writer in this fandom whom I admire. <3
> 
> Context for the timeline:  
> 2017- the end of Cars 3 takes place. Lightning chiefs for Cruz until the end of the season, where she becomes the first woman to win the championship (and 2nd rookie).  
> 2018- Lightning returns to the Cup as a racer. He has a rocky year, but ultimately is able to secure the championship. A frustrated Storm wrecks him as the final race ends.  
> 2019- Year this fic takes place. Lightning enters for the cup again but is disqualified due to his injuries and a new speed min. rule. Publicly, he "retires", but in reality, he doesn't know WHAT to do...

It’s like a fishbowl, up here. Glass with glass, everything shiny, reflecting. Thick carpets dull any sound- it’s like you're watching the race from space. Separate, cool, air conditioned, entertainment with caviar and Escalades, like watching a game of cards with Tex’s fancy friends. You're used to it. It’s earned, it’s privileged, your life has been this way for years- a shiny bauble in Tex’s stable. But no one in the Dinoco box is really watching the race.

Half the box is occupied by 13 vehicles. The fourteenth car has the other half to himself, pressed nearly against the glass, counterclockwise, champagne forgotten. Every time the leaders pass below him, he inches forward against the glass, anxious from the hundreds of cubic yards of air between him and  _ the race. _ It's uncomfortably obvious for everyone in the room, his distress poorly hidden and palpable enough to make your paint prickle. It’s like the exact moment in those nature documentaries that the wild animal realizes it’s been trapped. The leaders whiz by again. He flinches.

You remember your retirement- it had been willing.

This is different.  
You have to say something.  
“Tex.” You say and look at your teamowner, voice low. He leans closer to you, cueing you to continue, “I told you this might be a bad idea.”

  
“Ah, just give him a few more minutes,” he says, always optimistic.

“It’s been 50 laps.”

“King, he told me he’d do it-”

  
You cut him off- he’s wrong. He doesn't _understand_. “I’m going to talk to him.” No, that’s not quite right. “I’m taking him outside.”

You drive away from Tex before you can hear his reply, gliding across the thick carpeting onto a layer of marble, rubber squeaking. Closer to McQueen, his teeth flicker through a grinding jaw, and you can hear his transmission clicking, smoothly engaging each gear, engine off. Like instinct.

His eyes stay fixed on the speedway below even as you enter his personal space. “Kid,” you murmur, the stares of the investors and businesscars boring into your rear window, “let’s take a little drive, yeah?” you say, hoping the word “drive” will speak to him on a level he doesn't even know, beckon his wheels to turn, up the room and down the hallway and out of the speedway because it’s instinct. You don't have to say it again because slowly, he looks at you, gaze intense and firey and  _ lost  _ in a way that makes your wheels want to turn too, and the sensation of cool marble on your treads suddenly makes your tank summersault. 

He grinds his teeth a few more times as you compose yourself before he nods, so small, reluctant but grateful. So you guide him up the sloped room, through the concrete hallways and down into the parking lot in front of the speedway, a silent and dizzy drive. The sun here is strong, like the way it beats down on you on a racetrack, asphalt dark and slimy and radiating. Again, you pinch the match that keeps lighting in you. It’s so long gone.

But for McQueen?

You suspect he’s still tangled by his right front axel in the catch fence, transmission bleeding red oil from where Storm had pushed Ramirez into him across the line at that weird, three-wide angle. You also suspect that the way he keeps clenching his jaw is to bite back snarls, and it reminds you of when you met the kid.

_ “He’s wild,”  _ Chick had said, unimpressed and sour like old gum as you both watched the kid run hot laps in the balmy Florida winter of 2005. It was true. But you’d never comment and give satisfaction to the competition that you might  _ agree _ . But now the heavy sun glints off McQueen’s red candy paint just the right way and you see his gouging weld-scars across his front-right fender and bumper, and you remember what Chick had said next.  _ “He won’t last,” _ he had bet in a stone-sinking, infuriatingly true way. 

It was all true- the kid was a maniac of the circuit. He had accomplished everything you'd ever done and then some in a third of the time it’d taken you; yet you are still his only living peer.

He’s taking deep breaths now, out of the fishbowl and into the open air, where there’s space to  _ move _ despite the stillness. Just in case. Somewhere, deep down, maybe you feel a little better too, but you've been long since conditioned. You can handle it. 

But nothing can handle McQueen.

You’re going to try, anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: Chick's quote is from BOOM! Studios' 2009 comic, "The Rookie".
> 
> Image of said panel: https://bisexualmcqueen.tumblr.com/post/179470784095/wild
> 
> there were a few more paragraphs from this which I had to cut. sad noises.


End file.
